SPUC calls HFEA Wilmut decision a licence to clone and kill

8 February 2005

SPUC calls HFEA Wilmut decision "a licence to clone and kill" Westminster, 8 February 2005 - The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has described the HFEA's approval of Professor Ian Wilmut's research application as "a licence to clone and kill". It has been announced that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has decided to grant Professor Ian Wilmut a licence to perform cell nuclear replacement, a type of human cloning. Anthony Ozimic, SPUC political secretary, said: "Any 'licence to clone and kill' strikes at the very heart our society's basic rule for living together in peace, which is 'do not kill the innocent', because the cloning process kills many embryonic human children at their most vulnerable stage of life. All of those killed are unique, never-to-be-replaced, totally innocent human individuals. "Any human biology textbook will tell you that our life began when we first formed as an embryo. The biological facts are clear. To treat or disguise human embryos as if they are nothing but raw laboratory material is both deceitful and disturbing. It is hypocritical lip-service for the HFEA to talk about the 'unique moral status of the embryo' when the HFEA licenses his or her killing. "So-called therapetic cloning exploits human beings and uses them as resources rather than respecting them as persons. As Dr Harry Griffin, who helped Professor Wilmut create Dolly the sheep, admitted: '[Therapeutic cloning] is clearly not therapeutic for the embryo.' "More than two decades of destructive embryo research has produced none of the cures which its promoters prophesied would be found, whereas adult stem cell research is already providing answers to neurological conditions like motor neurone disease. Anyone can go to stemcellresearch.org and find out why adult stem cell research makes human cloning redundant."